It's definitely strange--prior to the coronavirus outbreak, a lot of threads were dealing with speculation about the halfening, but that's noticeably taken a backseat to the effect the virus has had on bitcoin's price, which has been profound.

Right now I'm not expecting any price boost due to the halving in May.  It might have been priced in already as it was, and I don't think there's going to be any massive buying (or less selling on the part of the miners) in the next couple of months.  That could happen, but I don't think we're going to see a significant rebound until life around the world returns to normal--and that could take quite a while.

Whatever government is saying that might be correct, but that doesn't necessarily mean bitcoin is going to keep dropping.  There was an obvious correlation between the outbreak and the slump (in the stock market as well), but I don't think it's going to be prolonged.  In fact bitcoin seems to have stabilized around $6200 for the moment, and the way I see it the "crash" could have been much worse than it actually was.

People are selling all sorts of assets to free up cash, and that's all being done out of fear, but smart investors see times like these as good buying opportunities.  And obviously some folks have indeed been buying bitcoin--if they weren't, I'm pretty sure the price would have dropped much lower.

Looks like you're infected pretty badly already--I can barely make out your username.

So all this bitcointalk infection stuff has some sort of algorithm built into it?  That sounds exactly like something Theymos would cook up.  It's kind of neat IMO.

Yeah, I knew it was Theymo's joke as soon as I saw it.  I kind of expected an April fool's joke related to coronavirus, but I wasn't sure what he was going to cook up. 

That would be cool if true.  I noticed Vod is virus-free, as are you.  I was infected as soon as I looked at my profile this morning, so I never had a chance. 

Mmm hmm.  I'll believe that when I see it.  Today is a day for not taking anything seriously, not even COVID-19.  Some folks think this is all in bad taste, but I disagree.  Laughing in the face of catastrophe is a sign of something resilient in your constitution (IMO).

OP registered about 1.5 years ago and only has 15 posts--that might be part of the problem.  On the other hand, I bet he's got more accounts than just this one.

Also:
If you write English like the above, it isn't likely members are going to shower you with merit.  You might have more luck on one of the local boards.  In any case, earning merit isn't rocket science--you just have to write posts that are interesting or funny or otherwise catch the attention of members with merit to give.  And you've obviously been a member of bitcointalk for a while, so this is something you ought to know already.

As I've suggested in the past, try taking a look at the post history of members who've earned a lot of merits, see how they're doing it.  Part of it depends on which sections you're posting in, but mostly it's post quality (note: not post length).

Now that's funny!  It's nice to see a little bit of humor around this whole situation, because if you just go by what the media says, it's all doom and gloom. 

So there's not actually a toilet paper token?  I thought that had become a thing in the past few days, but I guess it was a joke....?  It would be a stupid concept, but it would not surprise me in the least if someone launched something like that, as there seems to be a coin or token for every little thing.  The ass-shaped graph was a nice touch, I have to say.

I do to, and not being a coder I'm not sure how it was done but I like it.

Looking to sell around $100 worth of bitcoin for PayPal, same terms as in the OP.  Drop me a PM if you're interested.

I've been watching the precious metals markets lately, and gold is definitely on a tear.  What surprises me is that silver dropped massively since the coronavirus outbreak--and the reason it surprises me is that retailers like Provident Metals and Veldt Gold are having a hard time keeping silver in stock because everyone is buying it.  Before the outbreak silver was around $17.50/ounce, and right now it's right around $14.  Crazy.

No doubt you're correct, and that probably reflected the general unease around the world and the expectation of a global recession.  Anyway, I don't own any gold but I'm betting now would probably be a good time to buy some if you've got the cash to do so.

Yep.  This guy thinks bitcoin could crash to $3800, and if you talk to 20 other analysts you'll get 21 different predictions--and they'll likely all be wrong anyway.

That said, it certainly is possible bitcoin could slump back down to the $3-4k range.  On the other hand, I think if it was going to do that it would have already when the massive selloff occurred right around the time that the stock market dropped.  Right now it appears that stocks and bitcoin are both rebounding, so that's a good sign IMO.  I bet a lot of investors saw it as an excellent buying opportunity, which is smart.

Yeah, and I don't buy into TA at all so graphs and predictions made from looking at them don't impress me in the least.

Bitcoin was on its way up right before the outbreak occurred, and it's pretty obvious to me that the epidemic is the sole cause of bitcoin's drop.  As supporting evidence, note that a lot of other markets have taken a hit at the same time--and I agree that a lot of it has to do with fear.  People are on lockdown; stores are closed; some items are scarce; and cash is king in times like these, so a lot of investors have sold bitcoin, stocks, gold, and whatever else to free up cash.

I don't think there's any other reasonable explanation, because there hasn't been any bad news about bitcoin since it dropped from $10k to where it is now.  It's the damn virus.

Yeah, I'd say so.  Coinmarketcap doesn't really provide anything except for data, which is something that your typical online stock brokerage does, and I see this as sort of an acquisition of a research tool to complement what Binance already has.  I don't see where the monopoly comes from, nor does it matter to me who owns CMC.  And hey, maybe if a legit exchange like Binance owns it, the site will stop reporting all that fake market data from other exchanges.

CMC isn't decentralized, by the way.  Binance isn't either, so the way I see it there's no net change in decentralization.  And I also don't see any of that as a real problem.

Yeah, that would be a good assumption except that he's had periods of inactivity before and there's no telling if he's going to be active on the forum henceforth.  There's also no way to know if that doctor's prognosis of two months is accurate or not.  It certainly doesn't sound encouraging, but docs have been ridiculously wrong about things like that--and for Bruno's sake, I hope he gets more time than that.

Yeah, I thought of something like that but personally I'm not crazy about the idea of checking the obituaries all the time.  On the other hand, I'm pretty sure a google search on Bruno's name would probably pull up an obit.  During the opiate crisis I'd searched for some names of folks I hadn't seen in a long time, and a few of them had died.  Anyway.

Me neither, and I was hoping it was a prank.  One of the first personalities I encountered when I registered here was Gleb Gamow, and I always had respect for him.  It's distressing to know that this is happening to him, but I admire the apparent calm demeanor he's showing in the face of death. 

I have kind of a morbid but practical question for Bruno: will the forum be notified of your death somehow?  Do you know any forum members personally?

That could happen, but I don't think it will.  I do have a feeling that the stock market is going to start booming again once everybody gets their stimulus checks, and it'll probably also lead to inflation of other assets to some extent.

All this money printing isn't going to be good down the road, though I'm sure we won't hear a lot of complaints from people about getting free money from the government.  It just seems like a crazy situation to me, and I don't know how our government is going to afford to give out cash to all its citizens.

Not too many people are talking about the halving lately--no shock there, given how drastic life has changed for everyone recently.  But I do still think there's going to be a positive effect come May.  It might not be as huge as a lot of folks thought earlier this year, but we'll see.

With not much else to do, I watched a Youtube video documenting life in China lately and it seems pretty obvious their government is in the business of information control--they all are, but the extent seemed to be like communist Russia or N. Korea.  Not surprising, and I pretty much figured it was like that in China.  So as far as what they're hiding from the world, it could be anything.

I don't think China manufactured this strain of coronavirus, however.  Their motivation for doing so would be iffy at best, and I would suggest that viral outbreaks can start anywhere.  This time it just happened to be China. 

And by the way, it drives me up a wall whenever Trump refers to coronavirus as "the Chinese virus".  If he knows something the rest of us don't, he should just spit it out.  It puts unnecessary blame on a country that most likely didn't intend to be ground zero for the outbreak.

Agreed, and I've used Changelly, Changeangel, and a couple of others in the past and I've never really had any problems (except with Changelly once, but it was resolved).  It's kind of nice that they don't require KYC.

Kucoin is one of my favorite exchanges, and so far they haven't required any of my docs.  I'm limited as to how much I can withdraw and can't trade with fiat, but that's fine with me.  I can't even think of another exchange that doesn't require KYC.  I'm pretty sure they'll all be forced to do so as time goes on.  No government wants to be kept out of the loop as to what their citizens are doing with their money.

I'm going to be honest with you: if you have no experience trading stocks and are asking the above question about bots, you're setting yourself up to lose money as soon as you start.

I don't actively trade stocks, but I do invest in them for the long term and have done so for many years.  I'd advise you to not try your hand at trading, at least until you do a lot more research.  Think about this, even mutual fund managers have a hard time getting gains that are above any of the stock indexes, like the Dow.  In other words, it's really really hard to be successful at trading, even for the professionals.

As far as what "apps" are good, that depends on what country you're in.  You're looking for an online brokerage if I'm not mistaken, and in any case that's probably where you want to start.  You could try Robinhood, which has low commissions, but again I don't know if they're available in your country.  TD Ameritrade is another popular online broker, and they have a lot of good research tools available.  Good luck.

I seriously doubt that bitcoin is even going to approach the low end of that range by the end of the year.  Right now it's looking like it'll be lucky to get back to $10k in 2020, which is unfortunate but nobody expected the world to get slammed by an epidemic.

Tron is going for about $0.01 if I'm not mistaken, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.  That isn't a coin that I really follow, but I'm pretty sure there's a ton of supply and it's not meeting the demand--kind of like doge.

But as far as where the crypto market will be once it starts to rebound, I don't know what the percentage gains are going to be (and I'm not going to guess), but I suspect they'll be huge.  Bitcoin and the altcoin market were heating up prior to the whole coronavirus thing, and it looked like 2020 was going to be a damn good year.  The real question is when this market panic is going to be over and when the virus is going to be brought under control.  That might take the rest of the year, but who knows.

The good thing is that bitcoin hasn't fallen as much as it probably could have.  That tells me demand is still there, even if there's a lot of selling going on.

Wow, I completely missed this thread until now.  I don't think OP is going to be returning, but I wanted to comment here anyway.

I saw similar behavior back in 2017 when bitcoin was on fire--people were borrowing money to buy bitcoin, sometimes taking out cash advances on their credit cards (with presumably high interest) to do so.  There was even at least one person who tried to--or succeeded in--selling his house to come up with more money to invest.  That's crazy, not only as a way to fund your hodling or trading in crypto, but for any other investment.  Even buying crypto on margin is extremely risky.

Hopefully OP is young and has a job.  If so, he's got a shot at paying off his debt to the bank and his father.  Also, his situation might seem to him to be hopeless, but it isn't.  Not by any means.  It's only money, even if it's a lot of it--and I suspect his father would forgive him even if he's pissed off in the short term.

Deal done, so I'm locking this thread.